The U.S.
Supreme Court Thursday
tossed aside more
than four decades of precedent that has allowed colleges and universities to
pursue the critical interest of a diverse student body through the
consideration of race and ethnicity as part of a holistic admissions process.
As ACE
President Ted Mitchell said in a statement about the decision handed
down in the high-profile cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against
Harvard University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: “By denying colleges and
universities an essential tool for inviting students with diverse perspectives
and experiences to their campuses, this ruling will harm the educational
experience of all students.”
However,
Mitchell stressed that “colleges and universities will redouble efforts to
pursue our missions, which absolutely requires maintaining equitable and
diverse campuses. We remain steadfast in our commitment to provide inclusive
and welcoming educational environments for all our students and their
communities.” Read Mitchell’s full statement here.
July 6 on dotEDU Live, ACE Vice
President and General Counsel Peter McDonough and Madelyn Wessel from Hogan
Lovells, both former campus general counsels who were part of the team that wrote
the amicus
brief ACE submitted on behalf or nearly 40 higher education
associations, will be discussing the case. Click
here to register.
President Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona also criticized
the ruling, with Cardona saying that the Department of Education would continue to work with
college presidents and other officials to help college students.
"We're going to find strategies that work that are lawful and follow
the Supreme Court decision, but are committed to the goal of making sure that
we're providing opportunities for students who maybe historically haven't had
those opportunities, and that we're providing opportunities for students, not
based on wealth or privilege, but on the their ability to be successful in an
agile learning environment at the university level,” Cardona said.
In that vein, the White House released a fact sheet announcing
“Actions to
Promote Educational Opportunity and Diversity in Colleges and Universities.”
In the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for
himself and five other justices, said that "nothing in this opinion should
be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's
discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination,
inspiration, or otherwise,” he warned that “universities may not simply
establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful
today.”
In blistering dissents, Justices
Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson characterized their conservative
colleagues on the Supreme Court as ignoring the persistent presence of racism
in the United States. See this NBC News story.
Sotomayor
described the court's ruling as one that “rolls back decades of precedent and
momentous progress.”
By
insisting that obvious truths about racial inequality be ignored, Jackson said,
the court's majority is preventing "our problem-solving institutions from
directly addressing the real import and impact of 'social racism' and 'government-imposed
racism,'" using phrases from (Justice Clarence) Thomas' opinion.